To help promote efficient electronic exchange of standard newborn screening data, the Lister Hill Center at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) in cooperation with the Newborn Screening Community and HITSP Population Perspective Technical Committee has developed draft guidance about the use of LOINC and SNOMED CT codes to report newborn screening test results in standard Health Level 7 (HL7) version 2.x message format.
(.xls)
— Includes the LOINC terms required to report all NBS results for all states — including variables for reporting an overall summary, for most of the card variables and, for reporting impressions, narrative guidance and measures of quantitative markers for each condition or condition category. This is presented in the pdf as a series of nested LOINC test panels. The overarching (all inclusive) panel is LOINC 54089-8 Newborn screening panel American Health Information Community (AHIC). Think of it as a master template from which each state can select the variables it needs to report NBS results in the same organizational structure. This LOINC report also provides the answer lists required by each categorical NBS variable as well as the SNOMED codes for each answer (when known). This same information in spreadsheet format can be imported into laboratory databases. (.doc)
— Shows an example of an HL7 version 2.5.1 message using these universal codes, and the nested panel structure mentioned above to report results of a NBS study. It includes annotations to explain the message and is divided into major sections that report a) the overall results, b) the card variables and c) the detailed results for each condition or condition category. The full set of available conditions and variables is included in the LOINC NBS AHIC panel.We welcome your comments and feedback.
Developed by the Public Health Informatics Institute under a cooperative agreement with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), these Newborn Dried Blood Spot (NDBS) Screening implementation guides provide a recommended approach for an HL7 Version 2.5.1 OML^O21 message to transmit NDBS laboratory orders from the birthing center/hospital to the public health laboratory, and for NDBS laboratories to use an HL7 Version 2.5.1 ORU^R01 message for sending standardized NDBS laboratory results.
As with many aspects of healthcare, the organization and delivery of newborn care is information-intensive and can be facilitated by automating information management, usually in the form of electronic health records (EHR) or health information systems. In 2010, the Public Health Informatics Institute, through a grant funded by HRSA, convened a workgroup to develop a message implementation guide to provide an electronic message template for NDBS laboratories to use for standardized reporting of NDBS laboratory results. The workgroup members include representatives from public health laboratories, public health agencies and the U.S. National Library of Medicine. These documents are the collaborative effort of that workgroup and are based on Health Level Seven (HL7) Version 2.5.1, as published by the HL7 organization (http://www.hl7.org/)).
HL7 version 2.x is almost universally available in large practices, laboratories, hospitals. Billions of HL7 messages are being sent and received per year in the United States. The US federal government currently requires HL7 version 2.5 for laboratory reporting. HL7 has wide international adoption, with more than 50 country adopters.
Additional details about HL7 can be found at the web sites below:
) means the link leads to a Web site outside the domain of the US Government.